


These Bandages

by akadiene



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Actually Gillyweed, Battle of Hogwarts, Divination, F/F, F/M, M/M, Marijuana, Scientific explanation of fate, compulsory heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8025898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akadiene/pseuds/akadiene
Summary: Lavender wants to be a Seer. Parvati just wants to be.





	These Bandages

**Author's Note:**

> This was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I've ever written. I'm exhausted. Never try to experiment with your writing style when you're writing for a deadline, is all I'm saying.
> 
> A few warnings/notes:  
> \- This includes sex while the two participants are still Hogwarts-age. In the scene I describe more in detail they are both 18, but there are mentions of sex acts happening while some characters are younger (but the same age).  
> \- There are canonical discrepancies here, so don't get all mad at me because I wrote Michael Corner as a Beater and he wasn't really in the books.  
> \- There is violence and torture. There is death. This is a look into Parvati's life pre-Hogwarts up until the Battle of Hogwarts, with a tiny little epilogue at the end. It's a war. There was shit going on.  
> \- Greyback is in this for approx. two seconds but he's very creepy and harrass-y in those two seconds.  
> \- That being said if there's absolutely anything I should tag, let me know and I definitely will.
> 
> This was inspired by two things -- the fact that Parvati's boggart is a mummy and the song [Bandages by Hey Rosetta!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja_Hkk9j2nM). I hope you enjoy -- comments and kudos are soooo appreciated.
> 
> I had help from the lovely [ani_mage](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ani_mage#_=_) and lots of encouragement from [brontë](http://dadbob.tumblr.com) a loooooong while back, so infinite thanks to them both. If anyone's interested, my tumblr is [fatlardo](http://fatlardo.tumblr.com/).
> 
> The idea of the seventh-year dissertations was inspired by/taken from [fluorescentgrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey#_=_). Go read their stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

_Take these bandages off_  
_Let me stand, let me walk_

_(Bandages, Hey Rosetta!)_

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the night when she woke it was to Padma’s hand soothing her tremors and wiping her brow with a cool cloth, whispering gently in her ear. Padma spoke to her mostly in English these days because their tutor had told them to practice more with each other in preparation for the move, and that they were both the most advanced in the class, which Padma felt served as encouragement to continue. Sometimes Parvati resented it -- the English -- as she resented other things -- England mainly, and the British Ministry of Magic -- but now was not the time to mention it.

“Vati, Vati, it’s okay. I’m here, don’t be afraid.”

They had learned about contractions the week previous, as it was.

Padma had lit the charmed nightlight with a touch of her hand in the space between Parvati’s cries and her waking, and Parvati willed her breath to slow with gulps of air, her heart to calm with each squeeze of her sister’s fingers.

“Thank you,” she gasped eventually. Padma helped her to sit, wiped her face now with the rapidly-drying cloth. It was canicular early-May in Bombay and something of a drought had swept through the city, so when their parents and house-elves were not around for _Aguamenti_ s after the underground streams dried up they used mostly rain water collected in buckets and what little was left in the tanks.

“Which one?” Padma asked, voice soft.

“The mummy,” said Parvati. It was not a common one, though the nightmares in general were a frequent enough occurrence that their parents now slept through their daughter’s whimpering and weeping, and would only wake if Padma went to fetch them.

“Oh,” Padma said, then, wisely, “it’s because you got wrapped up in your sheets, Vati.”

Padma was probably the smartest person Vati knew, and read books to learn charm movements the nine-year-olds in the tutoring group above them had not yet even heard of. And Vati was indeed wrapped up in her sheets a bit like a mummy -- even in the heat she could not bear to sleep uncovered -- and felt a half-hysterical giggle rise up in her throat.

“You’re right,” she said, and leaned into Padma’s salt-sweat-sticky shoulder. “That must have been the reason.”

“Would you like me to go get--”

“No. I’m better.”

“Okay. I’ll leave the light on,” Padma said, and burrowed herself in her sister’s bed sheets. It was part of the routine -- the cloth, the light, and then Padma foregoing her own bed across the room to offer her sister comfort.

The sound of her sister’s breathing was enough to ease away most of the tension left in her muscles and soon Parvati too was asleep.

 

* * *

 

By September 1st, 1991 they had both lost much of their accents, having been immersed in a new tutoring group for children of Ministry officials (and Indian Ambassadors) immediately upon their move to London two years ago. Parvati had been surprised a little at how easily the others had accepted them, with the notable exception of Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott. She was glad to be climbing aboard the Express with friends already on-board. Her sister was more apprehensive but they held hands when they walked through the compartments looking for Lavender and Terry and Susan, their trunks following behind obediently.

When they reached the compartment the others were already deep in discussion -- they had heard from an older Weasley that Harry Potter was on board and that Ron, who had also been in their tutor group, had befriended him.

“Vati, sit here and let me braid your hair,” Lavender said, making space immediately for her while Padma went to sit by Terry. They did this often -- Parvati secretly revelled in the deftness, the feel of Lavender’s fingers against her scalp while Lavender herself sighed over the softness of Parvati’s locks -- and she relaxed into the familiarity of it.

“What houses do you think we’ll be sorted in?” Susan asked. It was hardly their first conversation on the topic -- for two months before the summer hols it had been all anyone in the group could speak of. Parvati still had not come up with a proper answer.

“Hm,” Lavender said, her fingers stilling momentarily, “I’ve decided I’d like to be in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.”

“That wasn’t the question,” Terry said. “There’s a difference between what we are and what we want.”

“Why are the two mutually exclusive?” Padma said.

There was hardly any doubt anyway for those two -- Padma was quietly sure of herself in a way Parvati didn’t think she could ever be and was the only 11-year-old she knew who threw around words like _mutually exclusive,_ save Terry, who thought he was clever when he was being difficult. Parvati didn’t always understand him.

“Anyhow, I’d say it’s probable I’m going to be sorted in Ravenclaw,” said Terry.

“Is it what you want?” Susan asked.

“Like I said, it doesn’t really matter what I want, it matters what I am.”

Parvati rolled her eyes and Padma snickered when she caught it. “Oh, stop being like that. She asked you a question. What would be your ideal house?” Parvati asked.

“Well, Ravenclaw,” Terry said. Then he smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Padma was right. Sometimes they are the same.”

“Vati?” Lavender said. “What do you think?”

Parvati shrugged. “Honestly, Hufflepuff seems like the best house. I don’t know why Parkinson and Nott seem to hate it so much.”

“Oh,” Terry said, and there was a gleam in his eye, “now that’s a whole other question.”

“What, why Parkinson and Nott hate Hufflepuff? It’s because they’re lazy and mean, which is like, the opposite of what Hufflepuff stands for. They’re _obviously_ jealous,” Lavender said. When she spoke like that she could most likely convince Parvati of anything.

Someone rapped on the door of their compartment and a frizzy head poked in. “Has anyone seen a toad?” the girl said. She had big teeth and hair as wide as her shoulders, and was already wearing her robes, though Parvati was almost sure they didn’t have to wear them until much later.

“A few in my lifetime,” Terry said. “They’re generally warty, fat, dull brown-grey--”

Lavender leaned across to smack him on the arm. “No, we haven’t,” she said firmly. “If we do, we’ll capture it and find you.”

The girl had pursed her lips at Terry’s words and had kept them pinched when Lavender spoke.

“Thank you, that would be lovely.” Her tone did not really indicate loveliness but she smiled thinly all the same before turning to go.

“I would love to do something about her hair,” Lavender sighed when she left. “Some Sleekeazy’s would do her a world of good.”

Susan looked at her pointedly and crossed her arms.

“What!” Lavender cried. She tied off a braid and patted Parvati’s head which sagged from the loss. “I’m not going to say anything. You know, my mum always says--”

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all?” Susan said. She had taken it as her duty to train Lavender out of her judgments without much consultation from the others who all knew it was futile but who didn’t try to dissuade her as that too would be nigh impossible.

“No, keep it to yourself and tell your friends later.”

Parvati sniggered. “Unless it’s Pansy Parkinson,” she said, because this was previously agreed upon between them.

“Brutes,” Terry said, then gasped. “Gryffindors!”

“Harsh, Boot, already using Gryffindor as an insult,” from Lavender. “Watch you don’t get sorted into Slytherin.”

“That’s awfully essentialist of you,” Terry said.

“The whole system is, though,” Padma said. “It begs the question--”

Parvati didn’t listen to the question. She loved her sister but when she got to talking Parvati found it best to let her be as she rarely ever did in public. Sometimes Parvati’s efforts at clarifying flustered her.

Their parents had asked Parvati if she thought about what she would do if they were separated. She had replied that no, she did not think of it at all.

She was thinking of it now. She found she couldn’t stop.

 

* * *

 

She had not had the nightmare about the mummy in two years but should have known it was coming the second the hat had called out _Gryffindor!_ instead of _Ravenclaw!_ so when she woke with a muffled shout it felt almost like being back home in India.  
  
“Honestly,” she heard Hermione Granger (who was the big-toothed bigger-haired girl from the train) grumble from her bed across the room. Fay Dunbar and Kellah Fairweather did not stir.

“Shut it, Granger.” Lavender’s was not the meek voice of Padma’s but it was familiar enough that Parvati nearly cried upon hearing it. When she felt Lavender’s body dip the mattress and fingers flit through her hair, she did.

 

* * *

 

They knew of Professor Trelawney because she wrote the daily horoscopes in the Prophet and Lavender read them religiously and shared them every morning over green tea with Parvati, but they did not meet her or even see her until September 1993. Unsurprising then that Lavender fell in love with her (or at least her subject) upon first incense-shrouded class.

It _was_ uncanny, really, that Trelawney had predicted about the thing Lavender dreaded, which turned out to be the death of Binky the rabbit, and about Harry and his Grim, which should have shocked no one, as that boy had had more near-death experiences in the past two years than was necessary. What the professor didn’t know was that October 16th was the day Parvati first felt a trickle of blood seep through her pants, an altogether terrifying experience she had been afraid of ever since Lavender’s older sister Scarlet had sat them down in August to explain. Madam Pomfrey had been very understanding when she’d rushed to the infirmary halfway through History of Magic and had given her a potion for the cramps along with a supply of self-cleaning cloth pads.

“Confirmation bias,” Terry said after interrupting hers and Padma’s hushed discussion over supper at the Ravenclaw table and asking outright about it. “It would have happened today whether or not Trelawney said anything.”

“Yeah, but how did she _know_?” Parvati said through a mouthful of red pepper.

“And anyway, maybe that’s not true,” said Padma. Terry snorted in disbelief. “No, hear me out. We know that stress affects the body, yeah? We learned that with the mandrakes last year. So if Vati had been stressing over whatever it was she dreaded because of Trelawney’s prediction, then maybe her body reacted in a way that caused her menstruation to begin today instead of, say, yesterday or tomorrow. I mean, we’ll never know, but it’s possible.”

“You just scientifically explained _fate,_ ” said Anthony Goldstein, who was a half-blood with a photographic memory and liked to waste it by writing bad poems on his arm with a blue ballpoint instead of studying. “Rad. Has anyone got a pen on them?”

Of course, they were sitting amongst the Ravenclaws, so it was something of a trick question. Within seconds, he had three, the last of which floated too close to Parvati’s head and left a swipe of ink on her temple. Padma ducked her head and bit her lip as Anthony wrote something illegible on his palm. He blinked, cast his hand around for his wand with his eyes unmoving, then muttered something that caused the words to fade.

“Neat, huh?”

Terry still seemed smug. “Well. If no one else is going to mention the fact that Trelawney predicted it for Lavender and not Parvati, then I will.”

“Spoil-sport,” Parvati muttered. She began to pile more food onto her plate, Padma raising her eyebrow when she plopped a drumstick over mashed potatoes, because they had both never eaten meat a day in their lives. “It’s for Lavender. Fate or not, the fact is that she’s in mourning, and didn’t want to come down for supper. Her rabbit _died_. You’d best remember that next time you see her, Terry.”

In September there had been the incident with the Boggart-Mummy (which Parvati and Lavender had thought cruel, and was the only blight they could assign to Professor Lupin’s otherwise perfect record), and it had given Parvati such night-time terrors that Lavender had permanently moved into her bed for the week following. Parvati had as such been expecting Lavender in it when she went up the seven flights with the plate of food, and wasn’t disappointed.

“Eat, Lav, you’ll feel better,” Parvati said gently after pushing back the curtains and dropping the plate on the bed. She’d _Scourgify_ her sheets later, and her pillowcases, which were damp.

Lavender sniffled. Her eyes were so red and her irises so black it would have been frightening if not for the dribble of snot at her nose and the stuffed rabbit she held clutched to her chest so tightly Parvati was afraid the stuffing would pop out.

“I just feel like, like if I had just _known_ , I could have done something,” Lavender said through her hiccups. “I should have known.”

“How could you? He wasn’t sick, and he was just a baby. It’s not your fault,” Parvati said. She pushed the plate closer.

Later, in the pitch-dark night (it wasn’t yet cold enough to light the stove for heat) with Lavender at her side and the others hidden behind the curtains in their own beds, Lavender sighed. Parvati knew Lavender disliked having her hair played with and touched, so she rubbed her back through her nightgown, trying for soothing.

“Professor Trelawney said you could be a Seer,” Lavender whispered, voice raw and raspy from the crying. “She said you could have the Gift.”

“Oh…” Trelawney had said that, and often, and in light of recent events she was almost inclined to believe her, except she had never felt any stirring of any Gift or Sight or Prophecy save for once when she had been talking about her new favourite song with Padma and it had come on the radio immediately following. “I don’t know about that, Lav. Sleep, now.”

She was grateful when the nightmares stayed away that night.

 

* * *

 

All Hallow’s Eve that year had spiced pumpkin juice, jack-o-lanterns spouting jokes at every corner (which Fred and George and Lee quickly trained to spout filth), rumours that Fay Dunbar had kissed Michael Corner behind Hagrid’s hut last week which was particularly distressing for Lavender who had recently decided to fancy him, and Sirius Black.

“I should have fucking _known_ ,” whispered Lavender that night in the Great Hall where they lay on the ground softened by charms. The curse word startled Parvati, who had never heard such a crass thing come from Lavender’s mouth before.

“There was no way to know!” she insisted.

Padma, who had shyly asked Penelope Clearwater if she could sleep by her sister, turned over to face Lavender. “Statistically speaking, this is the third Hallowe’en where something’s happened. The troll in first year, you know, and then last year with Mrs Norris being petrified.”

“So I _could_ have known, then.”

“Well,” Padma said, “not for sure. Two years is hardly enough to establish a trend. But three…”

Before Lavender could open her mouth to answer, Parvati shushed them both. “You’re _not_ helping, Padma,” she hissed. “It is not our responsibility to stop bad things from happening.”

“Why not! No one else is doing it, so why can’t we?” Lavender was all but sitting up, gesturing wildly.

“Shut _up_. Go to _sleep_ ,” Hermione whispered from nearby, and Lavender sank back down on her elbows.

“We’re _thirteen_ ,” Parvati said, forcing herself to be quiet.

“So is Harry,” Padma said, and though Parvati knew it was dark, she glared anyway.

“My birthday’s in a month,” Lavender said. Then Percy Weasley loomed over them and their conversation went no further.

 

* * *

 

At thirteen, Lavender bought instant coffee over the holidays from the muggle druggist ‘round the corner of her house. She began drinking it gritty and cold along with her regular cup of tea so she could read both the grounds and the leaves and pretend she knew what they said. At fourteen, Lavender held Seamus Finnigan’s hand under the table at breakfast and Parvati’s over her plate of eggs, tracing the lines in her palm like she’d done countless times before. At sixteen, Lavender slipped into the dorm-room at thirty-six past twelve from a night out at the Astronomy Tower, her collarbone painted with lip-shaped trophies, and sat on her bed cross-legged for an hour, meditating, while Parvati looked on from the next bed over.

It seemed to Parvati that the castle had not felt so light since their first year – it was like the whole of the student body collectively remembered they were meant to be experiencing teenagehood together, though that might have also been the fact that Umbridge’s oppressive regime had been lifted and thrown to the forest, or so the stories went. There was something in the air – pheromones or the scent of the coming war maybe – that made it so Parvati felt that everyone was discovering sex and snogging at the same time. She was hard-pressed to walked ten metres in a corridor without spotting two people attached at the face. It was –

“Oi! Watch where you’re fucking going!”

She had rounded a corner and hit into a couple snogging against the wall – Theo Nott, who was blotchy, and of course Pansy Parkinson, who was similarly flushed and whose lips were red like a stain and a bit wet. Like dew.

“She probably can’t see through the caterpillars on her forehead,” Pansy said, scowling while Parvati stood as if Stunned. In fact it felt like she had been. “Come on Theo, this brat obviously isn’t going to do anything so civilized as apologize. Let’s go.”

They turned and went and Parvati’s hand raised unbidden to her brows, which she had plucked and arched just yesterday, copying a photo from one of Lavender’s fashion magazines.

“You were the ones standing in the way,” she mumbled rather belatedly which only earned her an odd look from a passing fourth-year Hufflepuff.

The whole exchange left her, as most things of the sort lately, feeling unsettled and slightly queasy. It was one thing to gossip with Lavender and Fay Dunbar about who was banging about with who while in the comfort of their dorm room – it was quite another to see it with her own eyes everywhere she looked. Even Padma, who generally stayed quiet about such things, had sheepishly announced to Parvati over a cup of tea last Sunday morning that she’d shared her first kiss with Anthony Goldstein, the hopeful poet, two nights previous. Parvati herself hadn’t had a date since the disastrous Yule Ball in ‘94, though she knew there were plenty of men who would take her to Hogsmeade or the Astronomy Tower if she gave them the chance. She just never did.

“You know what your problem is, it’s that you’re too intimidating,” Lavender said that night. They had claimed their favourite table in the corner of the common room, the one where they could best observe the goings on of Gryffindor House. Parvati was finishing a Potions essay while Lavender was laying out her new charmed Tarot deck again and again, whispering the incantations and questions that went along with it. The illustrations blinked lazily up at them.

“What do you mean,” Parvati said. She’d recounted the tale of Pansy and Theo Nott as soon as she could, adding in a generous amount of eye-rolling and disgusted sighs.

“Well, has any boy asked you out lately?” Lavender reached up to retie the bow atop her head.

“That Ravenclaw, Kinnon MacLeod,” Parvati said.

Satisfied with her hair, Lavender went back to her cards. “You said no. And anyway, that was like, two months ago." 

Parvati set her quill down. “Well, I didn’t want to go out with him. Maybe he wasn’t my type.”

“What is your type? You never want to go out with anybody.” It sounded almost like a whine. “We could double, if you did.”

“Where is Ron?” Parvati asked, skilfully disguising the desperate edge that creeped in with a well-timed yawn. 

“Quidditch practice. You’re changing the subject. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to, you know, kiss someone?” Lavender pointed at her with a card between her fingers.

The thing was, the thing was that Parvati did want to find out. She had recently begun testing things behind the security of her spelled curtains and once under the hot, coconut-scented spray of the shower. It wasn’t unpleasant, anyway, and found she quite liked certain feelings, like when she circled with two fingers that little nub at the top edge of her bits and pulled on her nipples. So in theory, she thought it might be quite nice to maybe begin with kissing a boy, to eventually lead to the other stuff. Really, it was almost a relief in that sense, knowing she wasn’t completely broken. Lavender had never said it out loud, mostly because Parvati had never asked, but she had hinted that Ron had at least done something with her, and that she’d reciprocated somehow. Anyway Lavender made no bid to hide the new potion she took each morning from the girls in the dorm. It made Hermione frown.

So Parvati wanted – something. In private, at least. But the thought of putting it all into practice made her a frankly bit nauseous.

“You’ve told me over and over again what it’s like to kiss someone,” Parvati said, which was true. That, at least, Lavender never had any trouble talking about.

“Oh, come on. You know it’s not the same,” Lavender said.

“I’m just not interested, alright? Besides, someone needs to keep a clear head to make sure you don’t make any bad decisions,” Parvati said. She grinned. 

“When have I ever made a bad decision!”

“Two words: Zacharias Smith.”

“Oh, Goddess. I thought we had agreed never to mention his name again.” Lavender grimaced.

“My sweet Lavender!” Parvati cried loudly, putting on her best Smith impression. “My darling flower petal! Do we not make a beautiful couple?”

"Stoooop,” Lavender groaned. “See, he is why I need to get these readings right.” She gestured down to her deck, which she’d reshuffled with a flick of her wand.

Parvati snorted. “Please, like you’re not just as sappy with Ron.”

"Well, Ron and I are different.” 

“Different?”

Lavender shrugged and grinned. “He’s a better kisser, anyway. And – look. I found this book.”

“A book! What’s a book got to do with it? I don’t think Ron reads many books,” Parvati said, still giggling. She was feeling warm and content now, much better than earlier, even as she knew she still had half a foot to write for tomorrow.

“One second.” Lavender bent down to retrieve the mentioned book from her bag and set it on the table with a loud thump. A cloud of dust came from it as she did, and it sparkled in the light. What pages were not frayed and rough were edged with a dirty rosy gold and the cover could have been green at a time, though now it was browner than not. The title, in that same dusted colour as the gilding, read _The Witch’s Weird, Fifth Edition_ in curling and re-curling script. It was thick, and smelled musty, and Parvati disliked it immediately.

“Weird? What’s it mean?” Parvati asked, waving around the dust so as not to begin coughing.

“Destiny. It’s a grimoire, but for divination spells. Here, look. I tried this one yesterday – for scrying.” Lavender opened the tome to page bookmarked with the notes they had passed to each other in Transfiguration yesterday which detailed their plans for the upcoming Hogsmeade weekend. “Like, I was supposed to use it in combination with this potion here, but I mean, I don’t just have absinthe on me, you know? It calls for some. Maybe I’ll try it over hols. Anyway, I just did the spell.”

She flipped through some more pages and turned it over to Parvati to look.

“Well, did it work?” asked Parvati. Lavender had recently added a half-hour of scrying to her nightly meditation ritual. The crystals she used had been a birthday gift from her sister Scarlet.

Lavender’s eyes widened. “I swear, Vati, it was so weird. I felt like – you know when you’re drunk, and like, you get really focussed on one thing? Like you could stare at your pinky finger for an hour and be totally happy and not notice anything that’s going on around you?”

The whisky, from Seamus and Dean.

Parvati frowned. “I guess. I don’t really remember.”

“Ha! Right. Anyway, it was like that. I was so concentrated on my crystal. I didn’t even notice how late it was until Hermione told me to nox my wand. Of course, that just took me right out of it, but I really felt like if I had just pushed a little harder I could have seen something. Really odd feeling. Floaty, like." 

“Floaty?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

Parvati shut the book with a decisive snap. “Sounds scary to me. Where’d you get it anyhow?”

“Trelawney signed it out of the restricted section for me,” Lavender said, grinning with her teeth. “Told her I was planning on doing my seventh-year dissertation on Divination and needed inspiration for my topic.”

“Your thesis! That’s in months still.” Parvati had not even yet begun to think of her seventh-year project. Not many but Terry and perhaps Hermione had, but they were in most cases statistical outliers.

“Well, sure. But I am going to eventually, and anyway, she was so excited because the last person who did one for her graduated in ‘92.”

Indeed, there were only seven students of their whole year working towards the NEWT. They had class all together on Wednesday afternoons, in the hot stuffy tower that smelled like sandalwood and gillyweed and sherry. Recently they had begun work on the science of prophecies and what it meant to live in a world where nothing was coincidence. Muggles, Trelawney said, did not always believe in fate and destiny, because they did not know about divination and true clairvoyance, and so many of their life philosophies differed greatly from wizarding society’s. How to find meaning in a world where everything was left to chance, et cetera – though sometimes Parvati struggled with the same even as she knew some things were pre-determined. As she knew that in some way or another, she was part of someone else’s story, someone else’s prophecy. Prophecies were quite rare, anyway, the last one recorded in Britain spoken some sixteen years ago, but the way Trelawney explained it, everything and everyone in the whole world worked to make one happen, even if – especially if – they didn’t know it. It made her feel small.

“Why’s it restricted, then?” Parvati asked. “It doesn’t look Dark.”

Just then the Quidditch team and their reserves filed into the common room one by one so Lavender hopped down from her seat to find Ron, and Parvati was left to tuck the grimoire back into the bag and finish her essay.

Parvati’s dreams began that night like many had as of late – a vague, faceless body touching her in ways she imagined she would most like to be touched, softly, deftly, unafraid. Except soon the body turned into that of Pansy Parkinson, and her derisive laughter rang out in Parvati’s mind, rendering her so frightened and ashamed she could not move. She was looking at herself from afar and as such it felt like she was experiencing twice the emotions – one self being trapped by what seemed like just harsh words until they became mummy wrappings, dirty and rust-coloured in spots like dried blood, until only pink lips and dark eyelids were visible beneath them, the other self watching in horror but unable to move, unable to help. She tried to push through but it was like walking against hard, solid wind, buffeting her from all sides, and when she woke not long after – or maybe hours later – it was with a hoarse, pained cry.

She had, in October, begun Silencing her curtains at Seamus’ advice, and as such she recovered alone, shivering, without a hand in her hair. Lavender slept in the next bed over. When she went quietly to the bathroom to splash water on her face the sky was already lightening to a dirty grey half-colour. There was no point, she decided, to try and sleep again, and anyway she didn’t think she was at all capable. Her hands shook when she summoned her bathrobe and shampoo so she could take a shower, and the image of the bleeding mummy was still there when she closed her eyes.

 

* * *

 

Parvati and Lavender still read the horoscopes each morning in the Great Hall, a comforting ritual, and they always shared their findings with those they sat with. Lavender’s small and contrarian owl Serafin delivered the Prophet as always the morning after the nightmare, and Parvati smoothed it out onto the table while Ron risked his finger to feed the bird a piece of bacon. Lavender, of course, was sat firmly on his lap.

“Who’s first?” she asked. 

“Let’s have a go, then,” said Seamus, who was sitting between Parvati and Harry and who had already spilled coffee on himself. “Hermione, could you have a look at this after? You know I’m rubbish at cleaning spells.” 

“What are you going to do when you’re living on your own, hm?” Hermione said from Parvati’s other side. “A year and a half, Seamus.” 

He grimaced down at his stained shirt.

“Apparate to his mum, I expect,” Dean said with a grin from where he was sitting with Ginny next to Ron and Lavender. 

“I think you’re forgetting when you asked me to sew your button back on last week, mate,” Harry said.

“How come you know how to sew a button, anyway?” Seamus asked around a bite of toast, but Harry just shrugged.

“Right, Aries. We got any other Aries today?” Parvati looked around, but saw none in their group. In third year she and Lavender had memorized nearly everyone in their year’s birthday for this specific purpose. “Okay. With Mercury opposing Chiron – that’s a planet outside our solar system Seamus, I know you never listened in Astronomy – misunderstandings in communications will occur if you do not pay attention. Try not to take things too personally, and speak clearly with your loved ones to avoid any disagreements. Be honest with your feelings, and avoid using any Silencing charms today.”

“Oh God, please do use a Silencing charm today, Seamus,” Ron said. He leaned forward and wrapped an arm tight around Lavender, who giggled. “Let’s not go back to the days pre-Silencing charms.”

“Oi, that was like, once. And if I recall correctly, I’ve _not_ been the only offender!”

“I was fourteen! Not my fault the twins told me _Sonorus_ was for –“

Hermione raised a hand and Ron quieted immediately. “Enough. We’ve truly heard enough.” 

“More than,” Ginny grumbled. Dean snickered into her hair. 

“Who’s next,” Parvati said a little desperately. “Virgo, alright Hermione, listen up –“

“If we must.”

“We always must,” said Lavender. She had around her head a red headscarf, which matched her tie which matched her lips which matched her fingers and toes which was bright and enticing like it insisted to be looked at, to be found in a crowd. “Give it to me, let me read it.”

At that point Parvati was still tired from her early morning, and maybe all the coffee in the world couldn’t quite wake her up, so instead of trying she just ate her fruit and yogurt and listened to Lavender’s voice and Ron’s laughter and Harry’s dry comments and Hermione’s huffs and Ginny’s whisperings in Dean’s ear and forgot almost completely about the rest until Seamus accidentally squirted tomato sauce onto her plate. She jumped.

“Oh! Thought it was blood,” she said, interrupting Lavender telling Harry just how he and Neville were doomed to die an early death if they did not pay attention to their hearts, livers, and their extra-curricular hobbies.  

“My liver?” Harry repeated.

“You _do_ look a bit yellow around the edges,” Ron said. “Right – oh, right _there_ , see?”

“Only because I haven’t quite forgotten about the Silencing –“ 

“Class!” Hermione cried, standing up in one sudden movement that shook the bench. “Potions. And Ginny – Herbology? Up, up, everyone. Come on.”

Reluctantly they followed Hermione out of the Great Hall, Ginny stopping off at the entrance to give Dean a firm kiss and a pat on the bum before heading off in the other direction.

“Speaking of,” Seamus said quietly into Parvati’s ear when they had nearly reached the Potions dungeon, “feel like indulging in a bit tonight?”

“Speaking of what?” she asked. 

Dean appeared at her shoulder. “You know, Herbology.” He winked. 

“What? I’m not even taking it as a NEWT.”

Harry, Ron and Hermione had walked away and Lavender slowed until she fell into springy step with them, still smiling. “They’ve got gilly, Vati. Wanna try some?”

So they did try some, and it tasted sweet and grassy in her lungs and made her head slightly fuzzy which she felt was going to be good when it came time to sleep. They sat at 1 am in the common room the four of them alone, spelling away the smoke with lazy flicks of their wands as soon as it was exhaled, Silencing the coughs they could certainly not hold back. It was Parvati’s first tentative foray into the world of gillyweed and of course Lavender’s too because nearly everything they ever did they did together first. She liked it. It took three long drags of a joint for it to begin its work in her system and then it was different than the whisky, but Parvati couldn’t exactly say why, aside from the general feeling of swimming through thick molasses. Well, Parvati had never been swimming at all, but Seamus developed suddenly a knack for analogies, so she believed him. For an hour Dean and Lavender could only communicate in varying pitches of giggles, until Lavender became serious and went to fetch her scrying crystals so she could try them while stoned.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Parvati said to Seamus, who was lazily levitating a lonely quill. She felt at that moment perhaps the bravest she had ever been in her life, and maybe ever would be again. Dean had gone to their dorm in search of snacky food he and Seamus hid for such occasions, and Lavender sat on the warmed hearth staring into the fire deeply with her gems hovering in front of her. Maybe, Parvati thought, if Lavender stared enough they could catch fire too with the intensity of her gaze. It was something she’d imagined before, anyway.

“Probably shouldn’t,” Seamus said. He shrugged. “Ma always says I’ve got the biggest mouth this side of the Union.”

“It hasn’t been called the Union in like, five years. And did people ever even call it just that?”

Then Dean came back down then with bags of exotically Muggle crisps which broke Lavender away from her trance with too-loud laughter and Parvati got caught up in it like a cat in yarn, which she thought of all on her own. It was probably for the best because Seamus really could not keep a secret and anyway Parvati had already forgotten which secret it was was she had wanted to share.

 

* * *

 

“Padma?” 

The distance between towers had never been so large before, when she knew Padma was stealing kisses with Anthony Goldstein in the Runic History section of the library, and when Lavender was up to the same and probably more with Ron wherever she could have him. So over the holidays they indulged and left one of their rooms to grow cold with absence. They slept together again like children, though now it felt often like Parvati had grown too big for her old-new bed, for her room, for her house. Or else it had all become too small.

Parvati wanted to say: I’ve tried smiling at boys and I’ve tried frowning at them and I’ve tried not doing anything too special to my face and still I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for. Really I don’t know what I’m here for at all. McGonagall asked me before we left to think again about what I want to do when we graduate and I don’t know what to tell her when I see her in January. Lavender’s already sent a letter to the dean of the Divination Studies department at Queen’s and I know you’ve been eyeing those pamphlets about that research grant in Scientific Magic Theory at St Andrew’s. Don’t tell anyone but sometimes I hope for You-Know-Who and the war to come soon just so I can stop thinking about everything but now I can’t look Susan Bones in the eye anymore…

Padma was already asleep, so all Parvati said was: “Goodnight.”

 

* * *

 

1997 arrived stumbling and unsure with a bout of warmish wet days before a three-day blizzard that forced Sprout and Hagrid and Hooch inside for theory lessons, and Firenze took to wearing enormous woolly scarves everywhere in the castle. The ancient castle was drippy then drafty despite all the magic that went into its bricks to keep it at a stable temperature. A strange howling hush fell over the grounds as if the snow and wind muffled everything, and most students spent their days no longer snogging in the corridors but instead in the library, in their common rooms and in front of the Great Hall fireplaces. They ate the last of their holiday chocolate and doing the work they hadn’t touched at home.

Lavender had chosen back in September under McGonagall’s guidance to move on with the Arithmancy NEWT but it was Parvati’s worst subject, so she instead took Ancient Runes with Seamus. It worked out because Seamus was surprisingly good at it – Irish Magic still relied heavily on runes and symbols and so he’d been exposed to the basic theory his whole life and had indeed chosen Hogwarts over a private school in Tara at which he would have been a legacy against his mother’s wishes. He didn’t mind either pairing with Parvati for every group project they were given, which suited her. The only other Gryffindors in the class were of course Hermione Granger and then Kellah Fairweather the almost disturbingly quiet girl they had shared a roommate for nearly six years and with whom Parvati had never exchanged more than four words at a time. The rest were Slytherins – Theo Nott and Draco Malfoy and Tracey Davis and Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass.

It was a blustery Thursday night when Parvati set out to find Seamus to work on some translations together. Second drafts of seventh-year dissertations were due on Monday so probably every student of that age was sitting somewhere in the library. Parvati stopped to talk with Katie Bell, who was doing her project for both Snape and Pomfrey jointly. It was about what Muggles called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the spells and techniques that could help treat it, Katie said, and she looked tired and drawn but was smiling..

“Pomfrey said she’s recommended me for the new accelerated Psychomagicology program at St Mungo’s. You know they have a school there?” Katie said. “I think I could be a Mind Healer, open up my own practice in a couple years. I’ve got – first-hand experience, you know? Which I think is important.”

“You could probably help a lot of people,” Parvati said. 

“Yeah, like, we were born at the tail end of the war, right? But it lasted, you know, for a decade or something before us. And the Ministry – even back then – never really did anything to like, help out the survivors, right? Aside from – aside from paying for new wands and the measly veterans’ pension program which still isn’t even indexed to inflation. It’s bullshit, really.” Katie seemed to have woken up and was gesturing wildly along with her explanation. “For a while they were just sticking everyone with PTSD, well before 1980 it was still called spell-shock, they were just putting everyone with the symptoms in the Janus Thickey at St Mungo’s. Which obviously isn’t a right fit for everyone, some people need more specialized and customized therapy. So now they’ve got this – the new ward, the Psychomagicology ward, it’s really brand-new, I’m going to the grand opening ceremony next week. I think it’d be so cool and good to be one of the first people working there, you know? To shape the future of Mind Healing.” 

“Well, you’ve got to graduate first,” Parvati said, winking and tapping one of the pieces of parchment on the table with her finger.

“Right.” Katie laughed. “Sorry, I just get like, really excited when I think too much about it. You’re probably one of the only people in Gryffindor who hadn’t heard all that before.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s really – I like hearing about stuff like this. Sometimes I feel like we live in, in – Padma calls it a vacuum.“

“A bubble, yeah? Hogwarts feels like a bubble often.”

“Exactly. Sheltered, like. Anyway, I’ve got to go – Ancient Runes with Seamus. But, um, good luck,” Parvati said, “and I’m sure you’re going to be great.”

“Oh, I think maybe I saw him go —“ Katie twisted and pointed vaguely towards the Transfiguration section “— that way. Good luck to you too!”

Down here the stacks were less crowded with students and Parvati only saw a few heads bent over books on tables when she walked by and looked down each aisle, searching for Seamus. She’d reached the wall and still not found him when she heard it – the sound which probably could only be qualified as a moan even if she’d never heard any aside from her own before. It was a girl’s voice, breathy and deep, and was followed almost immediately by some frantic shushing and quiet giggles from another girl. Another girl?

Parvati nearly fell into a bookshelf. Luckily the books were spelled to stay on their shelves unless a hand pulled them away deliberately, so she just clung to the shelf nearest and bit her lip to keep herself from swearing. The sounds were coming from the other side of the partition.

“Shush, someone will hear you,” whispered the second girl. It was, without a doubt, Pansy Parkinson. Parvati had spent too long replaying all of Pansy’s insults in her head to not recognize the voice.

“Not my fault you’re—oh, _fuck_ ,” said Millicent Bulstrode.

“Well if you want me to stop,” Pansy said.

“No, don’t…”

Parvati backed away with a clatter and ran, uncaring who heard or saw or if Pince was yelling at her. She ran all the way to Gryffindor Tower, where she found Seamus sitting in an armchair with his book spread on his lap. 

“Didn’t we say we were going to work here tonight?” he asked when she stopped abruptly before him, her bag swinging and hitting him in the knee. “Shit, are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Um, what?” She took deep breaths and closed her eyes.

“Sorry, just something Dean says. Must have picked it up. I mean – really, are you okay?”

She opened her eyes to see Lavender frowning at her from her usual spot on Ron’s lap in the corner, and it was all she could to not close them again and instead looked down at Seamus.

“Yeah. I – yeah. Let’s just do this. Due tomorrow, right?”

“Mhm. So Hermione says they’re not too hard, but she did have a bit of an issue with this translation here, you know the one Babbling sort of flew over last week with the Kaunan in the first part of the runic core and not the second… Here, look…”

She had never slept so well as that time they’d smoked the gillyweed in the common room so when she and Seamus were done, she asked him if she could maybe have a bit – “I’ve been, I’ve been having nightmares, you know, and I think it might help.” The joint he gave her was little more than a nub, but she smoked what was left in the shower with her wand blowing puffs of air up into the vents. She didn’t really know if it was going to be enough, and in her mind she heard Terry Boot say _placebo effect_ with a sneer, but even so when she fell into her bed and pulled the curtains shut she was asleep within seconds.

 

* * *

 

War came suddenly.

Well – maybe not. But that’s what they told themselves to avoid feeling guilty for spending the year previous giving in to hormonal urges and gossiping and worrying about NEWTs, ignoring the symptoms of a nation under attack. The _‘they’_ in this case meant the much diminished population of students who were not Slytherins or You-Know-Who sympathizers (the two were not, they learned after the death of Tracey Davis and family, mutually inclusive). And if they had called themselves an Army before – now they truly were one, with a hierarchy and informants and battles strategies written out with self-effacing ink and guerilla warfare tactics. Aided and abetted by the network of underground resistors across the country that included most of the professors at Hogwarts and some of the elves and portraits and ghosts.  

But war did come, if not suddenly then at least swiftly, and it was more terrifying than felt real.

Actually most of it didn’t feel real at all – until Tuesday nights when they gathered in the seventh-year boys’ dormitory in Gryffindor Tower do catch up on lessons and news, and they remembered that three of the five beds had been moved out overnight on September 1st. Until McGonagall pull Parvati and Lavender after class one day and said that Pomfrey was going to teach them Healing magic until they could fix torn muscles in a blink and stem internal bleeding with the snap of a finger. Until Jack Sloper’s Disillusionment failed on his way back from the Room of Requirement one night and the next morning the students had to stare at him, unconscious and tied to a wooden pole on the dais where Dumbledore used to give his oddest speeches. Until Luna reported halfway through October that Charity Burbage was not, as previously believed, taking a sabbatical to sell souvenirs and observe Muggles at Stonehenge, but had been murdered. Until Fenrir Greyback the werewolf came to Hogwarts and Seamus said he found him towering over Lavender in a corner, telling her how pretty she was over and over again. Until –

In November Parvati learned how to take a Cruciatus without crying.

She and Padma turned eighteen the 20th of January, 1998. That day she learned how to cast one.

 

* * *

 

“I’m fucking – I’m fucking angry,” Seamus said one night. Most nights. But this night, he was laying on a common room sofa with his arm partially Stunned – Pomfrey had taught them how when the Carrows had finally forbidden all students to go to her following detentions – as Lavender healed every bone in it that had been broken by Vincent Crabbe’s foot. The bruises would have to stay so the Carrows suspected nothing.

“You’re always fucking angry,” Neville said. He barely looked up from the correspondence he was writing out to the Order. He was still reeling from the loss of Luna and had begun, finally, to harden, to build up a shield only few – Hannah Abbott, Ginny – could break through. “What is it this time.” 

Parvati and Padma were by the fire reading and re-reading a letter their father had sent with an Embassy owl. One of the only kinds that not legally be intercepted yet.

“It’s Dean’s birthday,” Seamus said. Parvati jerked her head away from the messy and smudged handwriting. “And I just goddamn remembered.”

“Oh,” she said, “February 15th. I forgot too.”

Seamus’ wrist was bare because he had given Dean his 17th-birthday heirloom watch before Dean had gone into hiding in August. It was the last anyone had heard of him. 

“I checked his charts this morning,” Lavender said, now shooting a thin stream of water from her wand to wash off the blood from Seamus’s arm where Crabbe’s kicks had broken the skin, “and with the moon’s progress in combination with Venus’ position, and the, the tarot reading I did this morning, I think Dean is—” 

“Is he safe?” Seamus asked. He closed his eyes as if he didn’t want to see Lavender’s face if she said no.

“He should be,” she said. “Yeah.”

“I wonder – he must be cold,” Seamus said. He shivered in all parts of his body but his arm still immobile. “Fuck. What the fuck is wrong with me. I forgot his birthday.”

“Nothing,” Lavender said. “Nothing is wrong with you. I’m going to Ennervate your arm, alright? Move it around so the blood flows through it.”

He spun his arm around like a windmill, wincing, then stopped and took a breath. “I just wish—“

“Seamus,” Neville said, “don’t start with wishes.” 

“—I knew if he was, fuck, alive, anything. I miss him so much sometimes I throw up in the morning, you know? Like, it hurts. Physically, it hurts. I wonder if he knows that. If he knew I – I should have told him.” 

Lavender had settled behind Parvati and to braid her hair, and Parvati couldn’t help but to lean into that warmth. The fire flickered in front of them.

“I wish,” Lavender began.

“Not you too,” Neville said.

“I wish we could, like, predict what the Carrows’ next move is going to be.”

Padma folded the letter and tucked it back into her pocket. “We can,” she said. “Sort of.”

“What?” It was Neville, suddenly interested.

“So, it’s, it’s about character study, right. You can always – well maybe not always, but, okay, look. Think about the simulations we run, in the Room,” Padma said. “You can kind of tell what each person is going to do in a certain situation, because it’s – what they’re good at, what they’re comfortable with. Just by duelling with Michael Corner once yesterday, I knew that he’s learned a couple combinations of two or three spells that he does really fast one after the other. Uh, one of them is Protego-Confundo-Stupefy. And then he finds the nearest place to hide and waits for his next victim.”

“Jesus,” Seamus said softly.

“And it’s effective, right?” Padma went on as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “Because he’s practiced the wand movements until they’re basically just muscle memory, like he’s created one new big spell out of three other ones. And then he fucks off right out of there. But that’s how he is, right? Even in Quidditch, he does something like that. Hits the Bludger hard as he can then flies away before anyone has a chance to hit back. Or – last week when he got that little girl out of the Great Hall. He used—“

“The Peruvian Darkness Powder, right,” Neville said.

“But that didn’t work,” Seamus said, “he got caught anyway.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s not like that was part of his original plan. Anyway, it’s a pattern. Like – oh, I don’t know. Ginny uses her right hand for everything but Diffindo, Ascendio and Reducto. So if you see her switch mid-fight, you know one of those is coming.”

“That Auror, Tonks, I think? She’s left-handed. Ron told me once. She must have taught her those,” Lavender said, leaning in close and smelling of the cucumber lotion she favoured in the winter for her cracked elbows. Her fingers had reached the edge of the braid but she took it out and began again.

“So what’s the pattern with the Carrows?” Neville asked. 

“Um, I’d have to, like, make a timeline of events and look at it more critically, but off the top of my head – they like to use other people to do their dirty work obviously, and they’ve stuck to a pretty specific schedule of escalation for punishments which I think is something like once every five weeks they introduce something new. There’s more, I’m sure.”

“That’s, wow. We can use just that,” Lavender said.

“Absolutely. I don’t know how, I’ll leave that to you Gryffindors. Who’s doing the rounds tonight, have we got the new schedule?” Padma asked, pushing herself up.

Neville frowned as he thought. “Yeah, you better go – if I remember right it switches off from Sprout to Snape at nine. Which gives you – twenty minutes.”

The mummy woke Parvati that night, as it had been doing with alarming frequency as of late, and it was still at the forefront of her mind when Lavender crawled into bed with her. For once, Parvati didn’t feel like a child in need of comfort but rather a soldier afraid of what awaited her in the unknown dark.

“Vati?” Lavender said, her voice soft and close. In October Fay Dunbar had begun sleeping every night in her third-year sister’s room, and Kellah Fairweather hadn’t returned to King’s Cross after the holidays. Lavender had consequently convinced Parvati to leave her bed unSilenced so she could hear when she was needed. “Are you alright?”

“Lavender,” Parvati said. It felt at that moment like it was all she could say.

“Tell me,” Lavender said.

“I’m – we’re – India.” Salt dripped into her mouth from the tears she hadn’t known she’d been crying. “My mum’s already gone back, and they’ve shut down the Embassy indefinitely.”

“Oh.” It was like a sigh. “Oh, Vati. Your dad?”

“Hiding. Denmark, we think.”

“What about you? And Padma?”

“Portkeying from King’s Cross in June,” Parvati said.

Lavender pulled Parvati close close close, and Parvati cried into her neck with everything she had.

“I don’t want you to go,” Lavender said quietly. “You belong here.”

“I never really, fuck, I never really felt like I did,” Parvati said. She didn’t ask where Lavender meant by _here_ , because it didn’t even matter, _here_ was everywhere. This was maybe her biggest secret of all and she’d never said it aloud, had never even thought it to herself for fear it might make it truer.  

“Parvati, of course you do,” Lavender said. “With – you know.”

She didn’t know for sure but she hoped she did, so she wiped her eyes and her nose with a tissue Lavender handed her from her side table, and decided right then that maybe belonging wasn’t inherent but maybe she could do it anyway, maybe it could be a choice. She wanted to choose.

Seamus voice was loud in her head: _I wonder if he knew I…_

“Can I kiss you,” Parvati whispered. “I think I’ve always wanted to.”

Lavender kissed her first.

And then kissed her, and kissed her, and finally Parvati knew why everyone loved kissing because she didn’t think she ever wanted to stop now that she’d started. She moved on instinct, unsure if she was doing it right, but she must have been because Lavender’s hadn’t stopped yet and indeed had pulled even tighter to her body. Their breasts brushed through their shirts and it was gentle and electric all at once, and Parvati couldn’t stop her hands from pressing up underneath the material to hold Lavender’s waist, touch the smooth hot soft skin there. She wanted to be closer, to consume and be consumed, meld together at their mouths which were still dancing to a beat only they knew.

The first brush of tongue from Lavender, not at all tentative but still gentle, sent a thread of warmth down Parvati’s spine and into the depth of her vulva, blossoming and tingling with every breath. She felt her underwear dampen, and wondered if Lavender was feeling the same.

Then Lavender’s hands pulled down the strap of her camisole and her mouth moved from lips to neck, then from neck to nipple, which effectively put an end to any other thoughts in Parvati’s mind. 

“Oh God, oh God, oh God…” She said it like a chant, feeling Lavender smile against her breast, which was unlike anything she’d ever felt. Another new feeling she didn’t think she’d ever tire of. She gasped when Lavender pulled a bit with her lips and oh, yes, that was a good one too. Then Lavender was on top of her, bracketing Parvati with her arms, kissing kissing kissing and –

“Fuck, fuck,” Parvati said against Lavender’s mouth, because Lavender had readjusted so she sat on Parvati’s right thigh, and her knee had moved to push up between Parvati’s legs as she herself grinded down in one swift movement which left them both gasping. “Lavender…”

“Vati, I’ve never – not with a girl,” she said, hands touching skimming and touching everywhere she could reach. Parvati tried it too.

“Me neither,” Parvati said against Lavender’s breast, dark and lovely in the moonlight. “Never at all. But don’t – don’t stop.”

Lavender was wet too at the joining of their bodies, Parvati could tell, and she began to move faster, her breath coming quicker, and Parvati too felt her body climbing the hill, nearing the explosive crest. God, but Lavender was beautiful, her head thrown back and her braids tied up with a bow and her mouth open and shining, and then she thrust a hand in her shorts as she continued to rub against Parvati’s thigh and it was perfect, fucking perfect, and Parvati came with a shout that she would have been embarrassed about in any other situation but this one. Lavender continued her movements while Parvati felt like she was coming apart and then she too cried out and fell forward, hips jerky and quick until it subsided for them both.

They lay there panting together for a long time until Parvati finally spoke.

“Lavender? Was that okay?”

Lavender laughed into her neck. It felt like the first time either of them had laughed in months.

“Yeah,” Lavender said, “it was.”

 

* * *

 

In the Room of Requirement where they slept now there were rows of hammocks softened by ancient magicks, and a fireplace in one corner and a guitar and some percussions in another and a bookshelf with fairytales and war tactics along one wall and a portrait through which they received food and news.

“Something’s coming,” Lavender said. She was holding Parvati from behind in their enlarged hammock, arms locked around her waist like she never wanted to let go. And maybe she didn’t. 

Parvati wanted to say that something had been coming for a long time. That it was May 1st, and she didn’t know if she could survive another month and a half of this. That she would do it anyway, if she could still have Lavender at the end of it.

“I feel it,” Lavender said.

“I love you,” is all Parvati answered, in case something really was.

 

* * *

 

It passed in flashes:

Dean, jumping out of the portrait hole like a vision from another time, and Seamus running for him, to him, with him. Dean didn’t have a wand and had lost so much weight he fell over when Seamus tackled him…

Looking overhead to see the Army’s squadron of flyers – Ginny, Michael Corner and the others, joined by Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson, Oliver Wood. Swooping, diving, dropping fallen debris onto the heads of cloaked Death Eaters. Then Katie, graceful, falling…

Losing Lavender _– where’s Lavender?_ Neville saying she needed to focus, to remember what they practiced, to get her hand looked at as soon as she would have the chance…

Pulling Colin Creevey out of the way of and into an alcove created by a fallen statue and a collapsed wall…

Fenrir Greyback, wolfish and bloody, running through the courtyard, laughing as Voldemort’s voice, as cold and lifeless as Colin, rang out over the grounds...

Spells flowing from her wand so fast they were out and hitting targets before she even knew she’d spoken aloud, and they were colourful like fireworks: red, red, blue, yellow, orange, red, _green, green, green_ …

 

* * *

 

“Lavender,” she said, for maybe the hundredth time. It was no longer a question, just a desperate plea to every person who passed by. “Lavender, please, have you seen Lavender…”

No one had seen Lavender.

“Try the Great Hall,” said someone. Maybe at some point she would have known who it was, but they were sooty and bloodied and dirty and really, she didn’t even know her name anymore. She knew Padma – who was blind and limping but safe, she’d checked – and she knew Lavender.

Lavender.

She didn’t want to try the Great Hall. That’s where they kept -–

“Lavender?” she said again.

“Pomfrey – the Great Hall,” said someone else. “Maybe there.”

Someone screamed. It could have been her. It could have been anyone.

There was nowhere else to go but the Great Hall, but she couldn’t get there – every corridor felt blocked, and there were people everywhere, and fallen suits of armour and smouldering piles of rubble and when she finally found an open door she tried to push through but it seemed someone had called for emergency Healers and they were everywhere, and it was loud and it smelled and someone was crying, everyone was crying, she was crying, Lavender, Lavender, Lavender, and people were pushing at her from all sides as she tried to get through the crowd, and—

“Parvati?” someone said. Seamus? It was Seamus. He was missing a hand.

“Lavender,” she said. Nothing else mattered.

“She’s there,” Seamus said, and Parvati was already running, ignoring his cries of “Wait! Wait!”

Except the bed he’d pointed at was surrounded by people – Healers – so Parvati could not see anything or if it was indeed Lavender.

“Lavender?” she said to a Healer in lime-green robes. “Please, where is she.”

The Healer turned and stepped toward her.

“There's nothing—“

It was Lavender.

Parvati knew it was her, more certain than she’d ever been in her life, except she was unrecognizable, broken, and Parvati couldn’t stand anymore, she’d fought for so long. Lavender, her Lavender, beautiful Lavender... Parvati fell to her knees, but was unable to take her eyes off the bandages, rusty-red and around every inch of her body, wrapped just like a—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Mummy! Muuuummy!”

Parvati laughed as she heard the little pitter-patter of clumsy four-year-old feet run through to the kitchen to fetch Padma.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Parvati heard Padma ask as she bent to untie her shoes and set down her bag of birthday gifts. The house smelled already of garlic and curry and spiced wine and there was a fire roaring in the hearth in the living room, warm and inviting in sharp contrast to the snow outside.

“Auntie Vati’s here,” Sara said. “You can come say hello when you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Padma said. She appeared from the kitchen, round and smiling. “I don’t know why you don’t just Floo in this kind of weather. Driving just seems silly.”

“Because,” came Lavender’s voice from the door, “the thing has heated seats and I wanted to try them out when they would be the most appreciated.”

Sara barrelled into the porch to hug her Auntie Lav.

“Did you know it’s my mummy and Auntie Vati’s birthday?” she asked. Lavender swung her up in her arms and pushed her nose into Sara's black curls.

“I did know that. Did you know your mummy and Auntie Vati are getting old?”

Parvati gasped, then winked at Sara. “Well, I think Auntie Lav is forgetting that she’s older than us.”

“Are you really?” Sara asked. She frowned. “How old are you?”

“Ancient,” Lavender said. “Thirty-six.”

“Wow. That’s old.”

“Thanks. I’m starved, what have we got for meat around here?” Lavender asked, and Parvati smiled.

 


End file.
